ENGLAND — ADLIB Audio supplied sound for the Sessions Stages at both sites — Weston Park Stafford and Hylands Park Chelmsford — for the 2008 V Festival. The Sessions Stages featured rising new talent. Crew chiefs Richie Nicholson (Chelmsford) and Hassan Essiahi (Stafford) led two teams of ADLIB technicians and experienced one of their most enjoyable events of a mega busy 2008 festival season for the Liverpool-based company.
In Chelmsford, the PA comprised a NEXO Alpha ground stacked system, with 10 M3 mid-highs, 10 B1 bass units and six S2 subs a side, with four ADLIB FD speakers for infills and outfills. The Nexo was powered by a combination of Camco Vortex and Tecton amps, and the crossovers were Nexo’s proprietary NX242s.
At front-of-house was a Midas H3000 console, chosen because most visiting engineers were likely to be familiar with it and because it’s an ideal console for festivals. Alongside it was a standard ADLIB FX rack, containing all-the-hits-and-more including a Yamaha SPX 2000, a TC M2000 multi-effects processor, a Lexicon 81 and a TC D2 delay, with Drawmer Gates, BSS and dbx compressors.
The control rack contained a BSS Omnidrive, which sent the left and right feeds from the desk to the main PA and fills.
Onstage, the monitor rig consisted of a Midas XL3 console, five pairs of ADLIB MP3 wedges and a custom drum fill, all powered by Crown amps, with dbx 480 crossovers and a rack of BSS 960 graphics.
Sennheiser worked closely with Adlib on both Sessions stages, and sent a selection of mics for the occasion of which the ADLIB team used 935 vocal, 901 and 902 kick, 906 guitar, 905 instrumental and 614 condenser mics. ADLIB also supplied two full sets of their own assorted mic packages, containing Shures, AKGs and others plus two sets of stands and cables.
The stage was run on a rolling riser system, so enough kit was made available to be mic’ing up the two next acts whilst the current one was onstage.
In Chelmsford, Nicholson ran the monitors, FOH was looked after by Otto Kroyman, Neal Sellars took care of the patch and Chris Walls looked after the mics, stands and ensured everyone was replete with cups of tea “He makes an amazing cuppa,” states Nicholson, who also declared that V 2008 was, “My favorite festival of the year so far.”
Up in Stafford, Hassane Essiahi worked with Chris Sudall (FOH) and John Fitz on monitors, with Jay Smith doing mics. Their system was almost identical to Chelmsford, with a slightly more compact PA consisting of four NEXO Alpha M3s, four B1s and six S2s a side, all stacked on the stage with two M3s as fills.
As with Chelmsford, their primary objective was making sure that the diverse line up of bands all had a great sound and that the various visiting engineers were happy and well looked after.
Essiahi comments, “As always, it was a pleasure to work at V — it’s an extremely well-organized event with a great atmosphere and everyone had a great time.”
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For more information, please visit www.adlibaudio.co.uk.
